The In-Store Process

Did you know you don’t need any wine making knowledge or experience to make your own award-winning wine?

Seriously, none.

Learn how we can help take care of all of the heavy lifting (and stabilizing, and clearing, and filtering), so that you can skip ahead to the best part: enjoying it.

Here’s how.

Select

Browse our website to get a sense of the wines we have available, or come visit us in-store to talk to one of our knowledgeable staff members. We have a wide variety of wine kit types and varietals and can help find you find the perfect wine. If you already have a few favourites from the LCBO, that’s perfect! We can often suggest equivalents that you can make for a fraction of the cost of the wines you already enjoy.

Start

Our staff will begin by preparing the paperwork that will track your wine as it goes through each step in its production – from fermentation to bottling. If it’s your first time, we’ll set up a customer profile so that we can contact you when your wine is ready for bottling. This step and the next usually take less than 15min to complete.

Ferment

By law, you must add the yeast to the grape juice to begin the fermentation process. After this point, the wine is legally yours – we’re just taking care of it for you. The staff member assisting you will ask you to sprinkle the yeast packet provided in the kit over the grape must, and to give the juice a stir, to begin fermentation. You may also be asked to stir in some additional components such as bentonite (used to clarify some wines) and/or oak chips (to replicate oak barrel-aging) if your kit contains these. That’s all! Now you get to go home and make room in your cellar – we’ll do all of the heavy lifting for the next 1-8 weeks by racking, stirring, stabilizing, clarifying, and filtering your wine.

Bottle

Our staff will contact you when your wine is ready to bottle, if you haven’t already booked a bottling appointment. On your bottling day, bring your clean, empty bottles (30 x 750mL or 60 x 375mL, plus one or two extras, just in case) and we’ll set you up with our automatic bottling equipment. We have a 30-bottle washing machine (no need to wash by hand!), an automatic corker, and a heating unit to help seal shrink wraps for perfectly polished bottles. We can also produce custom labels, in case you’d like to personalize your wine bottles.

Most of our customers can bottle a full batch of wine in 30min or less. With a helper or two, the whole bottling process has been completed in less than 15min (and we welcome attempts to beat the current record of 11min).

Enjoy!

There you have it – you’ve just made your very own batch of wine! Now the fun part: enjoying the fruits of your labour. Just remember to come see us again 1-8 weeks before your cellar runs dry!